System Malfunction
by Errie Wyvern
Summary: Dominique is a robot. A computer. When the world changes, she does not.


"He's not coming."  
  
"He'll be back. He promised me he'd be back..."  
  
He rubbed his hands over eyes, pushing his long red bangs away from his face. So many nights, sleepless in front of a monitor, trying to find some way to shut her off. To...suspend her functions. Make her sleep for a few more years. Only fifty or so. Didn't computers need to be turned off every now and again?  
  
Ryou opened one blue eye slightly. He was the great-grandson of the late Volt and Echidna Shirogane. He continued with the family 'tradition' of piercing. A small silver hoop dangled from his earlobe, and a bright red ruby was sitting on his nostril. It was mild compared to the rest of his family, but it made girls swarm over him in flocks.  
  
And, with being one of the Shirogane line, he had inherited her. Dominique. The robot-girl who'd fallen in love with Sion, and vice versa. He'd grown...old. She had explained to him, when he was younger, how alien the idea was for her. She'd been 'born' as fifteen, and she would die that way. She was cold now, always watching him as he typed away on his laptop, sometimes peering over his shoulder.  
  
She was always toying with a long silver key chain that hung from the glove on her wrist. She always wore a bright yellow overcoat with a brand long out of style emblazoned on it. Tight blue underneath. And a cute little cap on top of her head.  
  
It was like she was a doll. Perfect in every sense. Blue eyes, blonde hair, perfectly pale skin. She had remained that way for the past one hundred years. Never changing. Always constant. Her hair didn't grow, she didn't flake any skin, never lost an eyelash or gained a wrinkle.  
  
He'd been with her since he was seven. She hadn't aged a day.  
  
He wondered if that was why Sion had withered away to nothingness. Growing pale and silent, pining away for an innocence and a naïveté that he wouldn't have been able to keep for long. The slightly shiny matte of her skin, the slightly nylon feel to her hair, even the way she was able to sit completely still were reminders of what he could never have. Sion had died of a broken heart. Dominique had died the same way. She tried to suspend her functions herself, but didn't have the knowledge to figure out which switch to flip.  
  
It was strange really. She, as the computer, should have been able to do anything to herself. The only thing that Ryou could think of was that there was a password-protected area of information that she couldn't access. If only he could figure it out...he'd thought of the possibility that the program would have only been inactivated by Dominique's brother and creator. If that was the case, he was pretty much screwed, short of completely opening her up and taking out her hard drive or motherboard. He father had already tried that one. He had ended up halfway across the room, electrocuted.  
  
There was no way to safely turn her off and poke around inside of her. Ryou didn't want to suffer the same fate of his father, but there was little else he could do.  
  
Right now, as he was typing in front of his laptop, trying again and again to hack into the Mikado main server, only without avail. He had asked her once, if she could do it. If she could hack in and try to find some information about herself. She had only shrugged and asked why would she want to? She had no desire to be shut down and locked away in a closet somewhere.  
  
He peeked over the edge, only to see Dominique sitting on the window seat, forehead pressed against the window, staring out at the moon. He could only guess what she was taking in. Maybe trying to find all of the constellations in the galaxy. She wasn't breathing, but she didn't really need to. He could hear the small whirrs and clicks from within her body as she slowly moved her hand over the chain at her wrist.  
  
She then moved her head away from the window and sat silently for a moment. Ryou watched her expectantly. Her voice was almost rusty, crackling and broken in some places. "Ne, Ryou."  
  
He pushed his bangs away from his face again, his eyes once more glued to the monitor. "What is it, Dominique?"  
  
She sighed. It was deep and hollow. He looked up, not surprised to see her bangs shadowing her eyes. "He's not going to come back to me, is he? Sion's really gone..."  
  
He groaned. Of all times, now she had to figure this out. "No, Dominique, he's not coming back. He died almost one hundred years ago."  
  
She nodded. "It's just that I thought I felt him for a moment. You know, like he was standing by me or something."  
  
"Well, he's not."  
  
She was silent for an hour. He typed almost desperately on his keyboard. It was getting frustrating. He didn't even noticed Dominique get up and move across the apartment. She placed her delicate hands on his shoulders. She whispered in his ear, "There's been a system malfunction." A small smile graced her lips. "I was never supposed to be able to feel." Her grip tightened for a moment, before she ripped her hands off of him. "My system was not built to handle human emotions. I think I've finally beat the program. My password is 'Onii-Sama'. I have accessed my system menu. Would you like to suspend function perpetually, or with a timer?" Her eyes were a blank slate of ocean blue.  
  
Ryou looked over at her. She stood behind him almost perfectly still, except for the slight twitching of her right hand. The grip on her chain was loosening.  
  
He peered deeply into her glass eyes. Finally he lowered his head, hiding behind a curtain of auburn hair. "Suspend all function perpetually. Where is the shut down button on your body?"  
  
She turned and lifted the hair on her neck, pulling back a slight flap of skin. There was a perfectly round button there.  
  
The she turned around and her eyes glowed red once and then blanked out. She kind of titled to the side, her joints all locking into place, kind of like a sick version of rigor mortis. Her grip on the chain remained strong. Ryou went behind her and pressed the small black button. She shivered and would have fallen over if he hadn't caught her.  
  
He looked down at her peaceful face. Maybe she finally deserved a burial. There was already a place reserved next to Sion, for when something of hers wore out.  
  
He gently placed a kiss on her rapidly cooling forehead.  
  
System malfunction his ass. She'd been able to do that all along.  
  
She just always thought that Sion would be back to get her.  
  
The chain on her wrist was proof enough of that.  
  
FIN 


End file.
